


Three Bars

by Triskaidekalogue



Category: Toby Daye - Seanan McGuire
Genre: F/F, Femslash February
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-02
Updated: 2013-03-02
Packaged: 2017-12-04 02:07:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/705283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triskaidekalogue/pseuds/Triskaidekalogue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Toby enlists the Luidaeg's help (again), collects another scar (again again), and reluctantly prevails against the raptures of the deep (...this one's new).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Bars

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Femslash February. In case the summary didn't raise any flags, **warning for blood/consensual injury**.

Fury and resignation war for control of the Luidaeg's expression when she sees that I've turned up at her door after all. Well, she did tell me to come over. Sarcastically. I'm just honoring my Fae heritage when I ignore things like that.

"You're a big girl now, sweetheart," the Luidaeg says, settling for neither initial reaction. Her face is unreadable. "You can go get yourself killed perfectly fine without my help."

"That's the problem," I tell her.

"And now you're making it my problem."

She turns to go back inside. But as she lets go of the door, a pungent sea breeze gusts briskly through, creaking it wide-open for a second -- it's as much of a straight-out invitation as I'm going to get.

Before the Luidaeg can change her mind, I hurry on in.

Squalor drapes lightly through the dim apartment. Despite myself, I stop and gape; time was, the Luidaeg wouldn't have so much as cracked the door for me without dialing the glamours up to eleven. I guess she's got better things to do with her time than conjure up crusted-in brine filth and heaving shadows -- the whole shebang -- for someone who's already seen the real state of her home.

" ... inimical to my domain," she's saying as she winds back through the clutter, something in her hands. She slams it down on the coffee table, and I jump to attention. It's a shallow, rust-mottled pan of water -- of clear liquid, anyway. The table's so narrow that the pan practically overhangs its edges.

I give the Luidaeg a questioning look.

She sighs, arms crossed, or maybe it's a snarl. The hostility isn't directed at me, though, so I hold my gaze and she says, "This isn't like getting you to the Undersea. The best I can do is to draw on the commonalities between sea and _molten rock_ and try to fool the realms of fire into accepting my protections as its own. For all of, oh, a minute. Two minutes." She smiles exaggeratedly, her lips a tight, humorless slash. "If you're thinking, 'What fucking commonalities?', bingo! But hey, trust auntie Luidaeg. She's got this."

She sits, grabs my hand, and drags me down onto the couch facing her. We both bang shins on table legs and spill water on our jeans -- a ten-year-old would feel cramped in that kind of legroom -- but apparently I'm the only one who feels the urge to clutch my leg and swear.

The Luidaeg pushes my sleeve up.

My eyes are closed long before she's got a knife pulled out from Maeve-knows-where. I know what's coming. I grit my teeth, which seems to amuse the Luidaeg.

"Salt, heat, life, flow," she says, fingering the pulse in my wrist. "What, you really need me to walk you through the whole thing?"

I snort. "No, that's all right." My eyes stay closed.

"Good. I wouldn't."

The knife bites across several old scars on its way down my forearm. Copper floods my nostrils; I breathe out slowly and will the cut to heal faster.

I open my eyes to see the Luidaeg rummaging under the coffee table. The pan's contents have turned a deep, bloody pink. I look away hastily, and the Luidaeg snorts a laugh of her own.

"I'm glad I'm providing some entertainment," I tell her as I observe the delicate lines of water damage on her ceiling, in great detail.

From the sound of it, she's now either exfoliating a pint sized troll or mortar-and-pestling something into submission. She doesn't raise her voice at all, but all the same her reply cuts through the noise like her knife through my scars. "Honey, I have walked through more realms than you have hairs on your pretty, heroism-addled head. In none of them would this be considered 'entertainment'."

The nails-on-chalkboard grating stops. A billow of sulfur takes its place. I'm tempted to point out that my contact is a Magmid concerned about its distant Coblynau cousins, not a SyFy demon, but on second thought, she'd probably just make the sulfur part of her permanent decor. It takes me another moment to realize that the diesel stench practically climbing down my throat isn't just part of the background funk. Oak and ash. This better not be for internal consumption.

"Hey." The pestle hits my shoulder -- lightly, for a lump of rock that just finished reducing something to powder -- and I look down from the ceiling, brushing dark pestle-grit from my jacket. The Luidaeg gestures for me to lean over the pan, which is now a clumped, muddy sludge. "Cry," she orders.

"What?"

"Cry," she repeats impatiently. "I need your tears."

I give her a disbelieving stare. "I can't cry on command!"

This time the expression on the Luidaeg's face is definitely resignation. "I didn't think so. Fake tears probably wouldn't have worked anyway." She tilts her head and looks intently at me, drumming her fingers on the edge of her own seat.

"Come here," she says suddenly. I oblige, frowning in puzzlement, and she cups a hand around my jaw. Before I can ask what her backup plan is, she's pulling me toward her, her lips touching to my own.

The Luidaeg's lips are cool and wind-chapped and soft against mine. Her fingertips, callused and grit-smudged, barely dimple my skin with their gentle pressure. She tastes like the sweetest salt-marsh air that never could have existed and I'm reeling with it, leaning instinctively into the kiss. I barely miss the pan of whatever-it-is when I spread my hands against the table to brace myself.

Then she pulls away.

I blink, at a loss. A breath later I crash back to the shores of reality.

"What the hell?"

"Passion," the Luidaeg says, almost apologetically, as I straighten up. She indicates the pan. Its contents look like they've been scorched or salt-dried, leaving a stiff, cracked rectangle of eyesearingly red stuff. "Didn't have to be much, but as long as there was some passion, the physical substance could be foregone. Rub it thoroughly into your skin when the time comes, hair too if you want to keep it. Like I said, it'll only last two minutes, tops. Talk fast."

As the Luidaeg busies herself with a pile of yellowing newspapers and magazines, I touch my lips discreetly. Did that really just happen? Was it some weird hallucination of blood loss in conjunction with exposure to Firstborn magic?

She comes up with the lid she was looking for. I drop my hand.

"You'll know it's working when you approach the portal and it bursts into flame," she informs me.

"You're telling me to cover myself with stuff that's going to _burst into flame_?"

"You're the one who decided to play with fire," the Luidaeg says without batting an eye. She covers the pan and hands it to me. I stand automatically, banging my other shin on the table leg this time, and she rises with me and sees me to the door.

My thanks catches in my throat.

"Two minutes," the Luidaeg says into the silence. Her voice turns low and harsh. "You _will_ pull out as soon as the heat starts burning hostile. Dammit, Toby, I've lost enough people to Titania's affairs."

For a single heartbeat there is nothing remotely human about the figure standing in front of me. Then it exhales, and I'm looking at a woman again, an almost ordinary woman whose eyes happen to be dark from corner to corner, whose eyes... seeing them, every nerve in my body tells me that I didn't hallucinate kissing the Luidaeg.

I reach my free hand toward her, a tiny, aborted movement. She notices, of course. She probably noticed me pawing at my face, back inside, while she was looking for the pan's cover. But she smiles a barely-there smile and reaches for me instead. The next moment her arms are draped over my neck and mine have found their way to her waist and I am drowning in her unwavering gaze. I close my own eyes and her presence surrounds me, burying me in silt and ancient shallows. I want to stay there just a little longer, lost in her lips and tongue, the weight of her arms and the curve of her back --

\-- but -- 

\-- I am still a little bit human. Just enough. And the Luidaeg knows, and it's the Luidaeg who disengages first with a small sigh, steadying me with her forehead pressed against mine. The tide strands me gently this time.

It's like this, awkwardly entangled, the Luidaeg's oily black curls mingling with my own damp hair, that I make my promise. "I'll be back," I tell her. "By root and branch and rose and tree, I swear I will come back from this."

A salt-marsh breeze clings to me when I get into my car. The Luidaeg is silent and as inscrutable as ever as she watches me go, and her eyes are black, black, black.

**Author's Note:**

> Your feedback is definitely welcome. I find reader reactions (whether positive, negative, or unmoved) super useful, especially if they're able to pinpoint what elements caused the reactions.


End file.
